SW:ToR the Unexpected

By Malchome | Published: January 5, 2012

So I have started to write this post several times and each time change the title and or content.  So this is going to be a hopefully brief post to get a few Ideas/Thoughts/Opinions out there and I may elaborate on them in time.

Sometimes with games I get a type of all-consuming obsession to understand and explore a game or story.  It also happens with books, like when I read the first 4 books of the game of thrones back to back.  Having played one weekend of the SWToR beta I was not expecting for the trigger to occur with the release version of the game.  However the early game which feels and plays like tBC or Wrath wow in a starting zone is very different by the time you get off the starting planet.

In every game I play I always experiment with the crafting system and the crafting/modding system is usually what will give me many times the play value than the actual story line in the game.  Hell I would be all over EVE as a crafter if the resource gathering was not so risky and time consuming.  However the Everyone Versus Everyone nature of EVE discourages me from being anything other than a hanger jockey really.

WoW crafting has not really had any fundamental changes to it since Burning Crusade when they introduced specializations to several crafting professions other than Leather Working and Blacksmithing.  Too add insult to injury the BoP materials required for crafting has limited the system even more, not to mention screw up the AH.

I am still not sure where I am going with ToR or WoW at this point.  ToR still has a lot of bugs, but since it is new those will hopefully be fixed.  I have decided to cancel one of my 2 WoW accounts for now.  Whether I spin it up again will depend upon MoP Beta and maybe what other changes Blizzard implements in the mean time.  I am also completely surprised by my 180 or maybe it is a 90 degree change along a new dimensional axis. I was really enjoying the new content in 4.3 and then I got into ToR and honestly don’t care a bit about WoW content at the moment.  I am very happy for my guild getting a 8/8 kill in Dragon Soul and maybe starting Heroics soon, however I personally have no interest in Hard Mode content.

Regardless I think 2012 is going to be an interesting year in gaming.  With what looks like a real viable contender in the MMO market with ToR, Blizzard will actually have to get its ass moving for a change and maybe make “Soon”, either “Now” or at least a given time-table rather than some amorphous blob of time.

The content and feature war that is now starting should be interesting and in the end We the Players win either way.

Posted in Star Wars: The Old Republic | Comments closed

Blizzard DKP

By Malchome | Published: December 21, 2011

So last night a few guild members and I ran the LFR, we were 6 out of the 25 members in the raid.  As I was recounting a few loot results, Lissanna glared at me and stated how she did not approve of what we/I did.  We did not do anything that broke the rules of the system, it did break the unspoken conventions that most players seem to apply to the loot system but that is a different matter.

Essentially all 6 of us agreed to role need on everything we could and let the rolls sort it out.  This is what I call live by the roll die by the roll.  Now if we did win something that was not ideal or was labeled dps and was caster and a melee got it pass the item to a caster in our group.  This then would be bettering our group and while somewhat adversarial to the other 19 it is collaborative and cooperative within our group.

While I am torn on whether this type of collaboration should be allowed, it now is and given the shitty loot system in WoW it is really the only way to play, other than getting really lucky, which is bullshit.

For the LFR players are bitching up a storm on how the loot system needs to be fairer or more intelligent.  While that would be nice there are always going to be winners and losers and people bitching about something.  The answer is actually very simple and straightforward, which means that if it is ever implemented it will be 2-3 expansions from now or in a different game.

The Answer is Blizzard DKP, with a change to the loot tables for LFR.

All Boss Loot tables will only consist of Tier Tokens.
Each Boss will drop 2 Token and no other loot in LFR.
Each Boss will award 1 Blizz-DKP Point/Token.
In each LFR Instance and Capitol there will be a Blizz-DKP Vendor.
Each Vendor will have all the other gear that would normally drop in the LFR level of the instance to purchase.
At the end of each Tier all DKP is converted to JP like VP is now, (May need to raise the cap on JP).
Blizz-DKP is earned each boss kill regardless of whether the player qualifies for loot or not. 

Given a normal full clear of Dragon Soul on 25 man we would see 8 * 4 = 32 pieces of loot.  Given a 25 man raid that is  1.28 pieces of loot per player per week.  So if we halve the # of loot drops because we will still have the tier tokens drop randomly from the bosses, that works out to an average of .64 pieces of loot per person per raid tier per week.

So what should items cost then.

Most pieces of gear should be worth 12 Blizz-DKP, 2 handed weapons 24 Blizz-DKP.  Now given rarity and stat point cost each actual piece would be acceptable to be worth 10-15 or even 18 for 1 handed weapons of a higher item level and 30 for 2-handers that are of a half tier higher.

The most important part of this whole system transformation is the last requirement that I bolded above.  This is important because we want to reward players willing to help kill bosses that they no longer qualify for loot from, i.e. reward their effort.

I have long hated the random loot system, actually for the entirety of my time playing wow.  It is not a major break as most of the other systems seem way to grind-y and I have come to accept that we need at least a little of the “Slot Machine Loot System” to keep the monkeys addicted to the chance of loot.

Yes I do realize that there will be some that will completely whore this out and run enough LFR to purchase LFR items in every slot the first week.  My opinion on that is, who cares.  If they are having fun and they help others complete the instances at the same time then so be it.  If you have the time and patience to do that more power to you.

I think this hybrid loot system which is very similar to the JP/VP system with the exception that it is for gear in the middle of the 2 which makes it different.  At the end of every tier of content the left over DKP should be converted to JP just as VP is to reset each tier.

Posted in Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria | Comments closed

4.3 Actually A Breath of Fresh Air

By Malchome | Published: December 16, 2011

I asked a while back if 4.3 would stop the burning?  This was several months ago and the community was in full swing talking about Firelands.  This was pre-MoP information overload.

At that point, I was and still am to a lesser extent bitter and disappointed in Cataclysm.  The release of MoP information at Blizzcon got me interested in WoW again for a few days, and then after returning from the event, I actually ran a heroic or 2.  I was then immediately burnt out again as the heroics/Zulroics were too long, took too much effort for way to little reward.  The thought of attempting to queue up for one of these was enough to cause me to log off and go play an Xbox game, EVE Online, Civ5, anything other than WoW.  Fortunately enough for me I was able to get into the D3 Beta so that distracted me for several weeks.  However after the 3rd character data wipe, it induced the same inertia into logging into it that the Zulroics did.

I already ranted a bit over the raid design and the stay the course attitude that was expressed at Blizzcon.

Now that 4.3 has been out a few weeks, I have to say that with a few minor tweaks if the stay the course plan in MoP is like 4.3 I can accept that.  I would still prefer and Ulduar model with LFR auto-locking to the easiest setting but like I said minor tweaks.

IMO 4.3 is one of the most successful patches to an expansion that has come out for WoW.  The other contenders would be Ulduar and the original ZA patches.

What metric am I using to decide this.  Well since 4.3 hit the live servers I have most likely run more heroics than I did the entirety of Cataclym up until 4.3.  I VP capped on at least 6 characters for the past 2 weeks.  On average that amounted to about 7 heroics per character which puts the estimate at around 35 heroics a week for 2 weeks, and some LFR on top of that.  There were large stretches of patch 4.2 where I did not run 1 heroic a week.  I just did not care, the normal heroics while quick and a ROFLStomp, which I find entertaining did not really get me anything and the Zulroics were a major Pain In The ASS, so I did not run anything, see earlier description of playing other games and reading several book series, including The Game of Thrones.

The only really major Negative I have for this patch is the complete lack of consistency in the handling of Professions and the AH.  But given Blizzards track record with crafting professions in the game I should not be surprised but it is still a major annoyance because, the crafting systems are a subsystem in the game that I actually enjoy pissing with in games.  The fact that tailoring Dream Cloth is still Bo(FUCKING)P when Chaos orbs are now BoE is pathetic.  Please for the love of whatever demon of the lower planes in hell you worship Blizzard hire some more designers to deal with your crafting professions and only your crafting professions.  Additionally hire some people to actually model your AH a bit so that it is not the major cesspool that it is in the current state.    Your rarity dynamics on component materials that should be rare versus common are all FUBARed at the moment.

Anyway all in all I am pretty happy with the patch and hope to see some rapid iteration on the LFR.  I honestly believe that LFR by the time MoP is finished will be to Normal/Heroic Raids as Random Heroics are to Normal Heroics.  There needs to be greater rewards to the investment of time to run Random Raids multiple times in a week.  Be it major Gold or Major JP incentive.

Posted in Cataclysm | Comments closed